


heavy is the cost

by 28ghosts



Series: In Our Bedroom After The War [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Jezri hell, Post-Canon, past Julian Bashir/Elim Garak - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 10:52:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13522719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Julian shakes his head and starts walking again. Dax follows him. His shoulders are hunched. “I was just thinking that at least when I got turned into a new person, I didn’t have to meet anyone over again except my parents.”-A holosuite date and the differences between Ezri Tigan and Ezri Dax; the differences between Jules and Julian Bashir.





	heavy is the cost

_“En route, the symbiont took a turn for the worse, and, as the only Trill aboard, though one who had decided against joining, Ezri had little choice but to undergo the joining procedure, with only a fifteen minute lecture from the ship's non-Trill surgeon to prepare her.”_  
\- Memory Alpha

* * *

“I feel like I’ve really made my peace with it. So much that I've nearly forgotten why I hated it at first.”

It’s Dax’s turn to pick the holoprogram, so they’re picking their way up one of the forested hills of Bajor. She’d joked that she would have settled for Earth, but there were more cliffs there, and Julian might try to get back at her for picking a restive holoprogram for once by throwing himself off of one.

Julian had touched his chin and cocked his gaze as if thinking _I hadn’t considered that, but it’d be a good idea_ , but he’d laughed when Dax whacked his arm.

She continues, “I never wanted to be joined, you know.”

“You’ve mentioned it once or twice, yes,” Julian says, without sarcasm. He’s good about humoring her when she’s off on a tear about something.

“There’s counseling, usually. People who join because they want to. I didn’t want to.”

He knows all this.

Quiet for awhile. They slow their pace. Or rather Dax slows her pace, and Julian ends up following a little more closely. It’s not that he’s much slower than her, even though he’s got some years on her, but when he’s moving fast he takes these really huge loping steps and has occasionally crashed into her after zoning out a little bit. So when Dax just really needs to charge up a mountain, Julian has started keeping his distance.

“Not that you have to answer this, but...is that why you haven’t been back to Trill?”

“Not really,” Dax says. “Talk about a planet I know like the pack of my hand.”

Julian snorts at that. “Sounds a bit avoidant,” he teases.

“Don’t you start,” says Dax. She grins though. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

The program is set to be cool for Bajor, but they’re moving quickly enough she still ends up sweating even after the cloud cover starts to thicken. She’s programmed a thunderstorm to hit once they reach the summit, not that Julian needs to know that.

“I’m more worried about running into people I used to know,” she admits. The thought jostles her into stopping, actually, and turning over her shoulder to see Julian looking at her, curious and exactly as vaguely sad as he always looks. “I was always the one with no interest in joining. Pretty much every other Trill I’ve ever met who didn’t apply would have if they thought they stood a chance.”

“And all of the sudden you’re a new person.”

“Meeting all of you again was easier than that would be,” Dax says.

Julian’s expression twists into something bitter; Dax turns on her heel and tilts her head. Julian shakes his. She cocks a brow; his mouth twists into a one-sided smile. “It’s a bit self-pitying,” he warns her.

“Let’s hear it,” she says.

He shakes his head again and resumes. Dax follows him. His shoulders are hunched. “I was just thinking that at least when I got turned into a new person, I didn’t have to meet anyone over again except my parents,” he says drily.

“Oof,” says Dax.

“It’s odd, though. I don’t think I resent it anymore, either.”

Dax glances at him with a little jolt of shock; that’s something she really hadn’t expected to hear. “Yeah?”

“I mean there’s so many more important things to resent now,” he starts wrily, and when Dax laughs at that, the corners of his eyes wrinkle up. (They wrinkle more there than they used to.) “Really, though. Starfleet knows, so I don't have to worry about hiding, and I’ve still got my commission. Got through a whole war and stayed alive.”

He glances at her. For a moment she’s afraid he’s about to say something -- something serious? The whole conversation is serious; serious isn’t the right word. But he must see whatever vague anxiety she feels in her face because he looks away, focuses on the trail again.

“I’m grateful for what I’ve got,” he says firmly, as if to reassure himself. “And since I am, I guess it’s hard to think about in the same way anymore.”

“Sounds like you’ve made real progress,” Dax says, in her joke-counselor voice, and Julian shakes his head, grinning, but doesn’t look back at her. 

* * *

There were a few times when Ezri had hated Julian for saving the symbiont. Or had that been Dax’s sullenness? That was back when there seemed to be a separation. Before it started to feel real. Back when they were host-and-symbiont, Ezri-and-Dax, not joined Trill Ezri Dax.

Jadzia’s memories had been one of her only comforts. Not of her friends on the station -- no, the idea of meeting them, Benjamin aside, was terrifying. But of the way Jadzia had so easily transformed from Jadzia Idaris to Jadzia Dax. And the way she’d transformed with joy. Remembering from the inside, it didn’t feel like an erasure. Not like Ezri feared in the fifteen minutes between reporting to medbay and going under.

And then it had been exactly as she feared. But she got over it.

Jadzia Dax’s friends who had survived the war were her friends now. It had been Julian first, who understood her as not-Jadzia, but then again Julian had been the one to watch Jadzia die, so did that make sense? Dax couldn’t quite puzzle it out.

But Julian had always seemed to love most the people he had no hope of understanding, so maybe it wasn’t that strange.

* * *

After another half-hour of hiking, they’re both hungry. Julian sits, leaning his back against one of the trees. Dax sits cross-legged across from him and sets up lunch between them. Julian has one leg tucked up to his chest, the other sprawled out haphazardly. They eat and talk about nothing. It’s nice.

After they’re done eating, Dax reaches out for Julian’s ankle. She pushes her fingers up inside the cuff of his ridiculous uniform trousers, hooks them around the top of his boot. Watches through her lashes as Julian tips his head back against the tree trunk and swallows.

He looks old now, compared to when they first met. Dax almost wonders why she didn’t go for it then, but Jadzia protests in the back of her head. Dax almost laughs. Curzon would have gone for it.

This won’t last long. Staying in a relationship sure didn’t work for Jadzia Dax, and Curzon Dax was just incorrigible; before that -- skittering over Joran, who’s always there at the edges, Torias Dax… 

Dax has left behind a lot of widows. She misses Kahn. As Nilani, as Lenara.

She watches Julian open his eyes. He looks at her lazily and makes an effort to smile before closing his eyes again.

What will become of them? When will the breakup come, will she start it or will he? Will they stay in touch? Will he make his hollow-eyed way to Cardassia and try to find Garak again?

Maybe Ezri won’t ever learn, but Dax will. Even if they never speak again after this afternoon, all it’ll take will be her next host sitting down at a terminal and checking Federation records. It’s strangely reassuring to imagine.

Maybe when Benjamin finally shows up again, Dax will be there to greet him.

She tries to think about how things with Worf would have worked out for Jadzia Dax. She remembers herself being impetuous and temperamental, both as flirtation and just because she could. She remembers, the night before her wedding, Benjamin chiding her: _I grew up_. She remembers saying _I guess it’s time I grew up, too_. And she remembers dying.

This isn’t how Ezri Tigan would have lived. But she’s not Ezri Tigan. Dax scratches at Julian’s ankle and grins when he does that squinty thing he always does when he’s displeased with her. “Come on, Julian, we’ve still got half a mountain to hike,” she says.

She stands up and offers him her hand. He takes it. He doesn’t quite meet her eyes.

Dax takes the lead again. Who needs annihilation fantasies when you’ve got _this_?

* * *

_28 and bored, grieving over loss, sorry to be heavy_  
But heavy is the cost, heavy is the cost  
\- Personal, Stars

**Author's Note:**

> D’ya ever lose sleep over how fucked up it was that Ezri had to join with Dax even though she never wanted to join and how Ezri Tigan doesn’t really exist anymore? Haha me neither


End file.
